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''^'i^^lf^ .rjSagSi^ .r^^fSiSgS^ 

\ AN ADDRESS 

m COMMEMORATION OF THE ANNIVERSARY, 

OF THE 

WASHINGTON SOCIETY, 

t 

OP THfi UNIVERSITTT OF VZBGZKXA, 

Delivered on February 22cl. 1848. 

y 

BY JOHN GRIFFIN, 

of Washington County, Miss. 



Published by order of the Washington Society. 



I 



^ CHARLOTTESVILLE: 
JAMES ALEXANDER, PRINTER. 

I <^, 1848. 

^ r.>>8Xglfi^ .r.,>Sgg&Z -^-^^ 




AX AI)1)KE8]S 



IN COMMEMORATION OF THE ANNIVERSARY, 



WASHINGTON SOCIETY. 



or THE UNIVERSITY OP VIRGINIA, 



Delivered on February 22d. 1848. 



BY JOHN GRIFFIN, 

of Washington County, Miss. 



Published by order of the Washington Society. 



^ CHARLOTTESVILLE: 
JAMES ALEXANDER,— PRINTER. 

1848. 






Ci 



<6 



University of Virginia, Feb. 23, 1848. 
Dear Sia^ — At u meeting of the Washington Society, it was 
unanimously 

Resolved, That a Committee be appointed to tender the sincere 
thanks of the Society to Mr. John Griffin for his eloquent and 
appropriate Address dehvered on the 22d. inst. in commemoration 
of the anniversary of their Society and to request a copy for pub- 
lication. 

Allow us, Sir, to add our sincere solicitations to those of the 
Society and to hope that you wUl comply with our wishes. 
With sentiments of the highest respect. 

S. C. DAMELL. 
E. F. LABRANCHE, 
D. C. GREENWOOD. 
B. T. GUNTER, [ | 

T. M. MATTHEWS, 
JOHN HART, 
.Mr. John Griffin. 

University of Virginia, April 20, 1848. 
Gentlemen, — Through your very polite and complimentary 
note which was received in due time, I was informed the Society 
approved the Address which I had the honor to deliver before them, 
ou the evening of the 22nd. February, and also that they requested 
a copy should be furnished them for pubhcation. I would long 
since have written you in return, but a feeling of indebtedness to 
the wishes of the Society and a hope of aflbrding some slight en- 
tertainment to those whose sympathy Avill pardon the blunders and 
extravagance of a youthful composition, persuading me to comply 
with the request conveyed by your note, 1 thought it would be as 
Avell to postpone an answer until some difficulties of which you are 
aware, with reference to printing, were removed. As these no 
longer exist, with all the usual anxiety for a first submission to the 
press, I now respectfully put into your hands a performance which, 
besides its natural defects may have contracted many more in 
what Avas perhaps, under the circumstances, an excusable attempt 
at originality. i 

With every acknowledgment to the Society for the honor it has 
confened upon me, and with the sincere wish for your own and 
its success and prosperity, 

I am Gentlemen, your most obedient and humble servant. 

JOHN GRIFFIN. 



s. 


C. 


Daniell. 


E. 


F. 


Labranche, 


D. 


C. 


Greenkoop 


B. 


T. 


GfNTEK, 


T. 


M 


Matthews, 


Jo 


hn 


Hakt. 



^1 



It appears to me advisable here lo remark for the purpose 
of rendering the Speech more intelligible to those who may 
read it without a knowledge of the circumstances to which it 
was necessarily adapted, that the Farewell Address of Wash- 
ington, after a spoken introduction, was read previous to its 
dehvery : 

The allusions in its commencement are partly to this 
Address and partly to its introduction, and were intended, to- 
gether with a quotation copied from the introduction and 
beginning the topic of America, to ser\^e as connecting links 
between the two part?; of our celebration. 



ADDRESS. 



Fellow MeiMbehs of the Washington Society, 
AND Ladies and Gentlemen. 

I rise before you with all the embarrassment, that 
would, in my present situation, naturally proceed from 
a sensibility, which much practice in our Society, has 
been, even in the most familiar presence, entirely inef- 
ficient to suppress. But with the assurance that there 
is no one among you, who would be unwilling to extend 
me his indulgence, for whatever faults either fear or 
inexperience may cause me to commit, I will endeavor 
to fulfil my appointment. 

The celebration of your Anniversary, Gentlemen of 
the Society, should be, if I am not mistaken, with refe- 
rence to Washington ; with reference to our Country ; 
and to our Free Institutions, and Societies. These 
subjects having no logical dependence, in the rela- 
tions wjiich bind tfietn together and tlie present occa- 



siori being in its nature mure rhetorical than argumen- 
tative, it would neither be possible for me to maintain 
between the separate divisions of my address, any 
connexion more intimate than that which invention may 
supply ; nor would it be consistent with my position, es- 
pecially as a representative of an Institution, whose par- 
ticular office is to practice in the embellishment, rather 
than the essential of thought, to exercise, even where the 
unity of individual parts would render it possible, any 
greater share of strict reasoning than perspicuity may 
require ; but I will attempt to derive from whatever, of 
possibility or propriety, is left, and to preserve in every 
part, all the order and congruity I am able. 

Notwithstanding my eloquent friend has said nothing 
with regard to Washington that is not true, and not- 
withstanding the sentiment, in the address which you 
have just heard read, is the true sentiment and charac- 
teristic of Washington, yet so powerful are prejudice 
and jealousy, and envy and suspicion that even Wash- 
ington could not escape them. The greatest of patri- 
ots, he was branded with the name of traitor, and de- 
nounced as such not only by the laws and prejudice of 
Great Britain and a few ignorant or soulless Americans, 
but often by the blind and most mistaken virtue of the 
world ; expecting at least the full confidence of his own 
people, he was made an object of jealousy to Congress ; 
endeavouring to concentrate his power, his authority 
attracted the envy of his officers ; and directing his 
movements by the dictates of his own mighty genius, he 
became, most strangely, an exciter of suspicion. To 
have been the object of so much unfriendly inclination, 
whether malignant or misguided, must have been most 
distressful, and sadly irritating to moral endowments 
as amply developed, and consequently as sensitive as 
his, but with a sublimity not unequal to their delicacy, 
they remained superior to every shock ; and always 
Unitlc'l in the course which they {>ursuc(l by the pro- 



ibundeat reasoning, yet iinvviivering, went proudly on. 
till envy was left behind, and jealousy changed to 
love; till prejudice yielded, and suspicion like a dark 
dream which hangs on the sleeping ear, fled from the 
early ray that lit its emptiness, and left the waking na- 
tion to find instead of death and darkness and whisper- 
ed horrors, the life of liberty and independence, the 
light of an unparallelled and imperishable example, and 
the inspiration of most certain and boundless prospects 
of greatness and felicity, all breaking in a glorious 
morning from the countenance of him, whom they 
could mistrust ! 

But though there be none who will now deny that 
his deportment, both as a man and soldier, was indica- 
tive of a most transcendent moral nature, yet there 
are many who doubt whether his actions prove that 
subtle and grasping intellectuality , which is characteris- 
tic of the ablest generals. This opinion having for its 
basis, an absence of that disastrous splendour in his 
career, which indicates rather than intellect, a total in- 
diflference to the expenditure both of life and of wealth, 
and which has therefore far too long been received by 
earth as an evidence of her children's merit, is not 
merely erroneous, but stands at once in direct conflic- 
tion with what both reason and morality would have 
advised him. Every circumstance, — his necessity, his 
nobler ambition and his hope, conspired that no ro- 
mantic glory should be a part of his pursuit. Not only 
was his arrny too small and his means too scanty, to suf- 
fer the reckless waste, that would have been indispensa- 
ble to the attainment of any comparative eminence in 
tliis respect ; but his hope being liberty, his ambition the 
acquirement of good, both by inclination and deficien- 
cy he was constrained to avoid all plans of such ten- 
dency ; to slight all opportunity of display, and bind 
himself to an expediency entirely adapted to these. 
And though his performances may not claim this boast- 



s 

ed splendor ; and though in consequence, as long as 
ignorance shall prevail, he must remain in part deprived 
of that universal and unqualified applause, to which he 
is so deservedly entitled, yet such, to every intelligent 
mind, was the wisdom which determined when and 
where and how should be his battles, and such the rea- 
diness and foresight which combined and concentrated 
their influence upon the all-excellent object of his ef- 
forts, that these of themselves, even without the assis- 
tance of his morality, have exalted him high among the 
first fixed stars in the heavens of fame ; where, great 
survivor of all perishable renown, he, still unruffled, 
will hear the roar of every comet, and still unshaken 
see them pass away ! 

All ages that have been, and all nations have search- 
ed in vain for his equal in morality, and in intellectuali- 
ty but few have found his superiors. Both were of the 
sublimest nature — both were characterized by the no- 
blest qualities. No opportunity could seduce, no temp- 
tation corrupt, and no misfortune bend the one, and no 
difficulty could baffle, no obscurity lose and no confu- 
sion bewilder the other. At a time when he could have 
commanded the obedience of his soldiers in any under- 
taking whatever; at a time when the desire of the peo- 
ple was constantly urging him to positions well adapt- 
ed to the acquirement of highly distinguished personal 
honours, and he dissuaded compliance with it, only by a 
trivial opposition, which evidently to him alone, it bore 
against an almost desperate common interest ; at a time 
when all was dark, and his soldiers were destitute and 
had not even sympathy, save from himself and the pale 
Winter whose icy fingers enfolded their dead in their 
winding-sheets, and from the sobbing winds which mur- 
mured their requiem in the trees; — even then as belea- 
guered with storms, the world still holds a steady vvay, 
and all-unshaken by tempests and tumbling seas, on 
palm far reached through clouds and thunder, still blows 



9 

lo tiic ears of list'ning stars, such trum[)et as tolls un- 
ending exultation in her soul ; even thus triumphantly 
soared he, with all the storms of conflicting interest, 
and tempests, and tumbling seas of adveisity ; his only 
hope in the justice of his cause, his only strength in the 
Great Being whom he served ! 

And again, when opposing the armies of the mightiest 
power on earth, with a band not only incomparably in- 
ferior to them in point of number, but miserably equip- 
ped; from constant change without experience, and 
almost totally devoid of hope ; when not only was it 
incumbent upon him, so to direct the few as to vanquish 
the many, but at the same time to furnish where scarce a 
material existed, and to console where every circum- 
stance conspired to dismay ; — when involvcd^in a my- 
riad of entangled perplexities, and encompassed by 
countless dilemmas ;— even then as the great sun en- 
circling the year, with high-uplifted brow looks through 
the zodiac, and majestic marks the signs and soaring 
ever, still descries the beacons which guide his course 
through ether ; — so looked he through the haze of re- 
volution ; so marked he and pursued the signs of a con- 
duct which has made us Americans : so, fur out on the 
ocean of human advancement, his reason descried the 
beacons of a course, that will eventually from the dark 
deep, call home each wandering nation, and anchor it 
safely in the newly discovered port of peace and of 
liberty. 

Let them boast of the dazzling glory of their mighty 
captains ! let them boast they have fattened the earth 
on human gore ! let them boast they have (cd the pan- 
ther on human flesh ! let them boast they have stained 
the white wings of Time with human blood ! Alas, 
pale Justice, how fearfully in the face of starred hea- 
ven, have boasted their wars thy absence from the 
earth I Alas, Humanity, meek Angel, how cruelly have 
showered their battles on iliy hapless h( ad, thr: stony 



10 

hearts of men ! Tlial tlieir renown is more sirikingl} 
brilliant — that it is far more imposing than Washing- 
ton's, we do not hesitate to a(hnit. But would it have 
been, if they, like Washington, had pursued the policy 
of justice and of humanity? Would it have been, if, 
scorning a base self-exaltation as the sole motive of 
tlieir exertions, and enlisting, like Washington, in the 
most elevated, but at the same time, in its rejection of 
every unholy means, most rigorous and uncompromising 
of pursuits — the pursuit of unrestricted good, they had 
been compelled like him, to decline all opportunity of 
its especial promotion ? Alas for them ! deprived of every 
immoral expedient, denied every unscrupulous shift of 
bad-ambition, with all their forces lagging far behind him, 
their despair would have pronounced him unapproach- 
able. 'Tis not a blazing glory ; 'tis not a boastful 
renown which proves the most exalted powers : — As, 
subdued by the intervening veil of distance, the fair ra- 
diance in the milky-way is mild— but tells what bright 
unnumbered suns are far set and scarce seen in the blue 
modesty of heaven ; what bright unnumbered suns are 
high mountained on the grand mysterious hearth of the 
universe, around which the vast stars do assemble to 
warm their mighty hands ; — so, subdued by the inter- 
vening veil of justice, an unassuming glory tells what 
sun-like powers were piled on the grand hearth ; by 
whose out-blown summers warmed, every race and 
generation of futurity, unchilled by the frosts of servi- 
tude, will come rejoicing to the world ; what powers 
were deep set in the big religious soul of our own im- 
mortal Washington ! 

The career of Caesar was wonderful indeed, but his 
army was numberless, and his aim the unrestricted aim 
of glory. He won for himself an immortal name 'tis 
true ; 'tis true that even now, as a waning star through 
the shade of other days, he glimmers on the night of 
Rome : but the assassin's steel may gleam on tlie dead 



n 

man's face; Vesuvius still blazes — but silence and black- 
ness inhabit her plains: — the old nation shrinks from 
his ray, more deeply in her grave, and in her death 
dreams clutches her bony hands, as a still more utter 
death had waved his wings around her. Though his 
intellectuality and some few traits in his moral charac- 
ter were worthy his country, and though there was a time 
in which Rome, even Rome ! might be proud of such 
a son ; yet in the solitude of his bosom, were stored in- 
tentions, upon which shame and curses might feast with- 
out end. Hypocrisy ! an hypocrisy the darker as it the 
more resembled nature, and an insinuation most decep- 
tions and pernicious, served him at once to give and to 
conceal a vicious tendency, in all his actions, which 
was expected eventually so to dispose of their whole 
united and concentrated power, as might be pleasing to 
the nature of a most perverted and selfish ambition. 
His heart and face were dark — most ruinous contradic- 
tions. The one was wreathed in smiles : the other was 
a black fountain from whi^h welled the gaily waters of 
servitude. Yea, his heart and face were vilest contra- 
dictions ; but so great his prudence, so perfect his skill, 
that all the advantages of his double character were 
firmly secured to his interest : at once he enjoyed the 
gratulations, and plotted the destruction of his country- 
men. Suspicion walked forgetfully by his side; dissim- 
ulation held him her master-work. At no time was his 
vigilance lost, save at such times as all cause for vigilance 
is swallowed up in sleep ; and then at the darkest season 
of night; at the silent hour, when spirits wing them to 
their favorites here on earth, the angels of day and 
darkness come different ways across the globe, to watch 
on the slumbers of one each deemed his own, softly, 
face to face, alighting in the dim lantern twilight of his 
chamber, on troubled wings would start aback, with 
fierce amazed glance to find each other there, and shrink 
away distrusting nature. Heaven ;md hell st(tf>d aghast 



i'2 

from such a man. He filled all nations with his fame 
— every country flowed with admiration from his deeds : 
and his motives seemed good — a seeming benevolence 
looked forth from his actions ; — but he only dipped from 
the fountains of heaven, that men might drink and 
reel from the cup ; whilst he under the veil of their 
drunken confidence, sat down with his dark ambition, 
to banquet on human liberty ! Men grew complacent 
and smiled regardfully in his presence; but the mildew 
of wo hung around them in their smiles, and on their 
complacency waited new phantoms of silence and 
death, lately created by nature to attend in the tombs 
of their rights ! 

His ambition was most inordinate; yea, it was limit- 
less. Totally dissatisfied with the common fame of 
greatness ; wishing to be renowned above all the re- 
nowned, he lay plans for his own selfishness such as 
had no bounds in the present ; plans, that were at once 
the vault and winding-sheet of all that is noble in man ; 
plans, that when he were dead and gone, might stand on 
his dust and grasp futurity in their arms ! Yea, his 
ambition was boundless: no ambition that could warp 
such mind as Caesar's from the paths of jugtice, would 
be satisfied with aught in the circle of a life-time. Not 
only did he wish to be king himself, but that genera- 
tions of princes should look on their thrones and call 
him benefactor. And to accomplish these hopes — to 
secure this end, he spent his life in endeavoring to lay 
a foundation ; spent his life in endeavoring to put man- 
kind in a condition of slavery ; depending upon the 
years which are spun, which are measured forth by the 
silent globes above us ; depending upon time, whose 
j)rogrcssive agency forms the crushing embrace of ha- 
bit ; .so to deprave them, once in such condition, that 
eventually, around the eyeless skeleton of Liberty erect- 
ed as a monument on his grave, the groans of a mana- 
cled world might eternally anthem his requiem ! Yea. 



13 

he came forth u h( ii the uati(jn was sleeping in a lalsc 
security ; when all around was tranquil and reposing in 
the bosom of a seeming peace, and kneeling by his 
country's side, with his hands raised to tlie heavens, 
that could have tied with horror, dark from the dee{) 
solicitude of his bad ambition, prayed to the silent 
years whom destiny forced to listen ; prayed !o the 
Great Spirit of time, as his chariot dragged by har- 
nessed worlds, encircled the universe in endless flight, 
and out of the hazed distance, thundering from his i'ate- 
consenling hands, caught the chains of his influence, yet 
high depending from his car, a part of an endless, ever- 
length giving coil above, and but for Brutus' steel, had 
so fixed them on the heart of Rome, that aye, and aye, 
as through immensity whirled around this centre point, 
.they might enwra[) the globe and her in their dread em- 
brace, till all nations were helpless in their folds, and 
secured forever in the clutches of an endless habit'ial 
slavery. 

Napoleon, the great Napoleon, though in soiJie re- 
spects never surpassed, must at least in all the sublimer 
attributes of man, acknowledge one superior. Great 
indeed was he ; and no gift tlian his genius, more ac- 
ceptable at such time as his, could heaven have grant- 
ed man — but 'twas darkened with a curse ! Great in- 
deed, was he; and no influence than the waving of his 
giant wings, could have poured more nourishment on 
the rising flanje of liberty enkindled in the east, — but 
wo to the throne, which, consuming in its blaze, attract- 
ed the eye ol his ambition: — he turned the cut veins 
of lilurope on its fire, and Liberty fled away in the 
smoke of its extinguishment ! Great, indeed, was he, 
and no vessel more majestic e'er came from the hand 
of workman, no vessel more suited to conduct humani- 
ty o'er the dark seas on which it then tossed, — but 
alas; as pilot, there stood a demon at its helm, and nil 
the wiiid^; which rose from ihat l)lack oci'mii I)Ic>\v sini"- 



14 

Icr in its sails! Great indeed was he ; but alas for hu- 
manity that her greatest sons should often turn against 
her, and alas for human genius without morality — alas 
for unbefriended intellect, which though unprotected 
by its own powers, still requires in proportion to its ad- 
ditional grandeur, a more and more terrible ambition to 
inspire it: — As some monster shadowing the pale uni- 
verse in tempestuous flight, soaring earthwards and 
threatening man had stooped on the blazing immensity 
of the eastern sun, that from his whelming bosom dark 
inclined as about to plunge, and the continent vastness 
of his wide uplift and arched pinions, its fires struck 
back and downwards, left ths world to darkness, and 
made such utter night as bristled the stars with horror, 
and on heaven's front with lifted hands arrayed them 
sentinels to watch the gloom ; — so leaned ambition up- 
on Napoleon's genius, that all its fires were struck from 
the world ; so sat she there, that the sky of his soul — 
that part of man which is especially appropriated to 
heaven — his conscience ; in its redoubled darkness, as- 
sembled all its virtues to light the gloom, but they as- 
sembled could only raise their hands in horror ! — He 
came forth when night and day as equal rivals, con- 
tended each to fasten exclusive reign on human things. 
Darkness pleased him, and disaster and tyranny and 
with thrilling soul he leagued him with the night. — 
Death's angel, of this host king, at the decision grew 
pale for his throne, and shrieked as his sceptre was 
snatched away, by a still more disastrous hand than his ! 
The annointed of destruction, on the wings of the 
plague he soared, and scattered dismay through the 
earth! Nations gazed upon him, and staggered back, 
and fell blasted at his feet! The far shores of eternity 
were pale with their souls, that to escape his presence 
fearfully fled from the haunts of time ! The white 
bones of men bestrewed his path : the red blaze of cities 
biidr him hail : — yea. at the very mention of his nnme, 



\ 



15 

the giunt Power starting up in front, and striding moun- 
tains, with dreadful exultation, whirled on high the red 
flaming capitals of kingdoms, as mighty torches to 
light his midnight presence ! Ah, Russia ! Russia ! thy 
great genius, as a lonely madman cowering in thy blood- 
mooned wildernesses, did feel his might I Yea ! the 
red blaze of cities bade him hail ; the far failing roar of 
crumbling empires ; the deep, dark thunder of dispart- 
ing nations, bade him farewell ! The earth groaned as 
he marched, and echo followed from a million tombs. 
Prosperity fled from his glance, and when he spake, 
cold drops stood tremulous on the brow of heaven ! 
He sundered nations that his name might be whisper- 
ed in a curse ! He murdered a world that he might 
gaze at himself in a pool of blood ! Dreadful, dread- 
ful man ! Atlantic's dark spirit enrobed in seas, at 
the beck of his island monarch, out of the deep ari- 
sing, hailed, and called from every jarring region of the 
world, his countless myriads to make him captive, and 
in his ocean dungeon bound, assembled all his legion- 
ed billows to be his guard ! — As some vast comet, in- 
dignant hurled from the jealous hand of Night across 
the realms of Day, now with throbbing soul of fire, tu- 
multuous raves through vistaed worlds, and now with 
wild eccentric course and dread abandonriient, through 
the broke darkness plunged again, leaves them b'- 
numbed, deep trembling through the smoke of his con- 
suming heart : — So came Napoleon, so breathing storms, 
for the tribunal of its God, departed his soul from earth : 
On either wing, in upward flight, it bore a crimson sea, 
which by their troublous movement jarred into clouds, 
backwards sweeping, drenched the stars in blood, and 
left them darkened all as gradually cooling it changed 
to gore, as though they had put on sable mourning for 
their sister world !* All his wondrous genius only served 



* The wildness of this conception may be more excusable, if it 



16 

iti gloom the nations, as the sjilendored comet tli6 
worlds : all his gift to man was a gift of graves ! 

Great Washington was like neither of these. The 
earth was pale for Caesar ; there was a laugh of tri- 
umph in hell for Napoleon ; and a smile of approba- 
tion in heaven, for Washington ! No false inspiration — 
nor bad ambition, nor selfishness could actuate his no- 
ble mind. He entered not into contention for the pur- 
pose of aggrandizing himself, or of accomplishing any 
design of wo, but he came forth as a great nucleus 
around which scattered and distracted things might ga- 
ther and repose. He came the great being of good 
progressive change ; the great being of all advancing 
revolution ; that now no longer invisible agent of time ; 
no longer the sun of ages, which rising now on the 
coast of heaven, inhaled the spirit-light of eternal 
day, and swelling now on the world's blue, dispensed 
it to her nations, — to her nations which holding consis- 
tency with the new brought light, crushed and remo- 
deled at each succeeding time he came ; no longer now 
the sun of ages ; but arrived at last at the final field of 
his labours, arrived at last at the shrine of Liberty ! 
whitherwards tending his feet had trodden the wastes 
of a thousand centuries, a greater than he, in the image 
of his God, with a seraph's soul he came, to work the 
last revolution, and firm in the comet heaven of go- 
vernment, to fix on the azure brow of Columbia, the 
unchangeful, untottering polar star of nations. — He 
^ame when night and darkness were fearfully impen- 
,dent o'er light and liberty ; he came when tyranny was 
strongj and fiercely exacted, either slavery or death. 
All unshaken amid the warning desolation of republics, 
3f»<l still unawed among the silent graves of martyred 



l)e recollpcl(-d, that thr niiiht (if his dcnth was oxcccdin^ly tempes- 
tuous. 



17 

patriots he stood, and felt that desolation and a grave 
were better than slavery, and with a prayer put forth 
to the Great God of men, he leagued him with the 
cause of light and of liberty : Yea, he came forth when 
darkness prevailed and night, but he came not a friend 
of darkness nor a leader of the shades of night. He 
came in the roar of storms, but he came not to the 
call of storms : He came to the voice of humani- 
ty, who raised her red arms from a trackless vast 
of blood and cried to heaven for mercy ! He came, 
because the phantom of despair was exulting o'er the 
prostrate form of Liberty ! He came, because guilt 
was unbound, and the white robes of Innocency were 
gone in the sky ! He came as a mighty angel to assert 
the cause of Mankind, whom oppression had driven to 
the last verge of the world ; and as a mighty angel, 
braced against the clouds on the horizon, stood with 
the drawn sword of Justice and Jehovah, and at the 
raising of his arm the years of coming eternity were 
leavened with his deeds ! Yea, all future generations- 
will be bathed in the light of his influence, and not 
only will their praises hail him the first of men, but 
they will also rank him among the mightiest of cap- 
tains. For though he possessed no shadow of that 
rashness which a bad ambition gave to Napoleon and 
to Coesar ; yet Vengeance and Terror, at the call of 
Justice, would spring from their slumbers at his feet, 
and when he frowned, Injustice and Oppression had no 
home but in the cavern of Death ! Yea, they will 
rank him among the mightiest of captains ; for though 
in splendour of fame, he may not stand with the bright- 
est ranks of time, yet such were his plans and such his 
conduct in a great and doubtful war, that when its 
dark clouds were rolled away, he was left with the bare 
dripping heart of Tyranny in his hand, with smiling 
Liberty at his side ! 

He is gone now !— but he fell not the blade of ju* 
3 



lb 

assassin's ste«*l, nor fled lie away as a wild cornet through 
the night, but he went down like the glorious sun, and 
as constellations, come out in the dewy heavens, to 
weep for him ; so all the constellations of virtue came 
out to weep for Washington ! He is gone ; but every 
breathing light in the sky of renown, has sunk in his 
radiant glory, as the golden floods of your mountain 
sunset, slumbering in Jehovah's hands, had been poured 
among the stars ! He is gone; but white-haired ages, 
as they stand at far and lonely intervals, like nnighty 
towers with leagues and leagues between, along the 
hazy path of future time, will ever and ever be bathed 
and gladdened in the morning of his influence, and 
ever and ever still, till Time shall be no more; and 
then their spirits summoned forth in endless line, to re- 
count the lives of those who dwelt with them on earth, 
deep from their souls, will pour his praise on the An- 
gel's ear, who out of heaven, ten thousand centuries 
ahead of this, is sweeping adown the firmament along 
their fronts, to hear and record the deeds of all for 
final judgment in the skies, — and each succeeding one, 
as on he sweeps, will pour his praise, and point him on 
to each succeeding one, and on and on, till their line 
unillumined by his influence, grows gloomy and dark 
beyond the point of his birth ! He is gone, but over 
his dust there is towering a mighty tree, whose branches, 
in their solitary vastness hang wide in the blue gulfs of 
heaven, and all whose blossoms are stars ! our coun- 
try, our home — our own glorious America — the tree of 
Liberty. 

Yea ! " well may we be proud that we are Ameri- 
cans," — for America is the essence of ages, and the 
end of revolution ! All governments that have risen 
or fallen, all legislators who have lived or died, have 
only contributed to the developement of this last, le- 
gitimate condition of human existence. Yea, " well 
may we be proud that we are Americans," — for Ame- 



19 

rica is the lonely tree of liberty ; whose trunk is grow- 
ing from the grave of departed time ; whose roots are 
nourished by oceans of blood; and whose branches re- 
cline on the tombs of nations ! V'ea ! " well may wc 
be proud that we are Americans," — for America is a 
mighty scholar, whose education has been received at 
the death-bed of kingdoms, and whose advisers are the 
shades or the groans of empires, that from their tombs, 
or couches of despondency, eternally pour their cau- 
tions on the ear of her prudence. Greece, the fairest 
of empires, the favorite child of the olden time, o'er 
whose grave he still weeps and scatters his silvery hair, 
darkly resounding in the blasts of anarchial turbulence, 
with a voice more loud than the crashing thunders of 
her dissolution has bid her beware ! — Rome ! Rome, 
the oRce invincible, as transpierced among her vines 
she fell ; Poland ! the poor unfortunate Poland, in her 
weakness crushed ; Ireland from the grasp of England, 
fearful starting across the seas ; the old cities, by hea- 
ven's avenging curses swept from earth, the old cities 
which, far out on the endless waste of perdition, are 
bending 'neath the ban of the stars, — have all cried, 
have all shrieked her beware ! 

She cannot go wrong ! siic has heard the expcri- 
cnce of a thousand nations '. She cannot go wrong ; 
every path save the right one has been travelled before 
her, and every path save the riglit one is blocked with 
the bones, or dying bodies of those who attempted to 
follow them ! Go wrong ! she can take no false step 
this way or that, but warning echoes rise sad on her 
soul from the tomb of some buried empire : Go wrong ! 
kingdoms without number have perished — her builders 
must have had prudence: — her frame work has been 
put together by the hands of caution, whom the dark 
spirit of death had pursued for ten thousand years ! — 
Go wrong I Her institutions are the assembled good of 
all institutions, — as a blushing angel, she has walked 



^20 

among the briery ruins of the world, and from wilder- 
ness gardens weeping o'er the dust of departed gran- 
deur, gathered such roses, that should her oflfering 
hand present them to the skies, leaning heaven would 
take them with a smile ! Go wrong ! — Back Eternity 
is her counsellor — Death himself is her friend ! 

Our Constitution has at last raised and welcomed 
mankind from a chaos of false systems. At last it has 
reduced to proper arrangement, and regulated the great 
ground-work of that part of nature, by the Almighty, 
left to the management of human genius ; at last it has 
based every thing on the firm foundation of liberty, 
and under its guardian influence our country may 
truly and forcibly be termed, the end of revolution. 

Some dangers, 'tis true, may yet be existing, some 
impediments in her path — some obstacles in the way 
of her advancement, — but never. Gentlemen, whilst we 
rally around the standard of knowledge ; never whilst 
institutions like our own University, — a mighty heart 
driving blood through all the sunny regions of the South, 
continue to exist ; — never whilst our Institutions of 
Learning, like faithful telscopes directed on the past, 
continue to point out the banners of Life and Death — 
the banners of all that is good and bad in the history 
of nations, as they wave o'er the dust of perished time ; 
— never whilst the spirits of departed centuries, stand- 
ing here with such trumpets direct the movements of 
future ages, which on the banks of eternity assembled 
in council, stand listening to their voice ; — never, as 
long as the white winged years continue to guide to 
such fountains the footsteps of blind Futurity, that in 
their waters bathed, his eyes as from the finger of 
Christ may be blest with sight ; — never whilst our So- 
cieties, in which especially are cultivated Invention and 
Imagination, — the great power, which held the azured 
universe emblazoned with suns, in the mind of God, 
ore ho created it, — never, I say, whilst these receive 



21 

their proper measure of attention ; — never whilst ye 
who are the enlivening Fancy of our country, and the 
beauty and the life and the soul of strength, — never 
whilst ye who are like the spirit-winds, that ofl' the 
bloom of heaven, blow out in the stars to revive them, 
and wandering away, amid the far and fairy fields of 
azure, murmur a sweet melodium through the beamy 
hosts of the sky, and softly move and breathe their 
lights along the pensive blue,— never, whilst ye con- 
tinue to make the objects of your admiration, what 
man should make his aim, will our country be shaken or 
her prosperity diminished : but strengthened by know- 
ledge, polished by practice, and inspired by beauty and 
love, her genius will still continue to improve and em- 
bellish her condition, till all imperfection, till every 
trace of ignorance shall have vanished away, and she, a 
glorious gas-lighted city, in the blaze of Institutions erect- 
ed far and wide against every necessity, become so beau- 
teous and silvery with trembly lights, that the sailor on 
the dark Pacific, looking here, will dream it the resting 
place of stars, — where, like ladies, they remain awhile, 
e'er slowly ascending, they go out on the great floor of 
heaven to shine :— and when no light is seen on the British 
Isles, when briers have grown on the bosom of France ; 
when the solitary glow-worm is lighting the bones of 
Spain ; — when the Angel of Destruction is ruling in 
the empty throne of Austria ; — when the ancient Win- 
ter walking from the crystal regions of the north, looks 
down in the cold unmoving features of Russia ; — when 
every Kingdom has sunk into the bosom of oblivion, 
even then, unswept away, her states, as the family of 
Noah, will still remain ; and ever and ever as the splen- 
dors of the rising sun, are flashed on each succeeding 
phase of the turning world, so will her living glory be 
flashed on each succeeding age of the revolving world of 
time, forever and forever ! 

Then may our Institutions ever continue to prosper; 



may tliose who are the smile of gladness on the face 
of the earth — may those who are, after all, the govern- 
ors of mankind, continue to pour their heavenly influ- 
ence upon us, — and do you, Gentlemen, into whose 
hands is about to fall the fate of our country, do you, 
who in cultivating oratory, are preparing yourselves to 
go out on the great stage of the world, where weighty 
and undecided questions are discussed, and ever newly 
arising principles developed ; do you go on in your 
glorious career, — go on, and when in your aspirations, 
ye would be driven to hopelessness by the thousands 
of difficulties which obstruct the path to eminence, in 
this advanced age of the world, reflect that new and 
luminous stars, even from out the eclipsing radiance of 
heaven's bright multitude above, have been seen to 
glimmer foith and to shine; go on, and, when surround- 
ed by a world of invented things, ye would despair of 
doing aught that is new — reflect that the principles of 
mind and of matter — reflect that man, and the world, 
and the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and heaven, 
with their whole universe of contents, are a great all-ele- 
ment containing Alphabet ; out of which, as languages 
on languages, and volumes on volumes of original thought, 
from the vv'ords of each respective language, are form- 
ed from our own little assemblage of marks, — so may 
classes on classes, and systems on systems, from ihe 
parts of each respective class, of beauty, and grandeur, 
and sublimity, and strength, be constructed as long as 
time shall continue to exist. Go on, for all that is no- 
ble ; — go on, for all that is desirable; — go on, for love, 
lor friendship, for wealth, for fame, for patriotism ; — 
go on, for beauty moves solicitous at your side ; — go 
on, for friendship, mutually in friendship formed here, 
will find full many a blooming garden, where it expect- 
ed a waste, in its travels through a cold, neglectful 
world; — go on, for wealth strews diamonds in your 
path ; — go on, for heaven's recording angel, at the nght 



23 

of God, with a pen dipt in the fountain of eternal hfe, 
raises high his hand to inscribe your names on the scrolls 
of immortality ! Go on, for upon you, especially it 
devolves, as planets lighted and blest by the patriotic 
glory of Washington, to illumine the darkness of his 
departed Sun ; — go on, for the angel of America's des. 
tiny, standing aloft in cloudy chariot, looks back to see 
which way ye point him ! — go on, for ye are pilots on 
the banner-ship of Nations — Be your Compass Rea- 
son, Eternal Justice tour Polar Star ! 



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